Greenpeace: Brewing trouble for Indian tea

New Delhi, April 10: Greenpeace India did not restrict its activities to fuel protests in a bid to block developmental works and cause job losses to locals. It also ran an active campaign to undermine Indian tea, which was becoming popular in the international market, alleges a dossier by the Home Ministry which was prepared on March 4 this year.

The Indian Government yesterday seized seven bank accounts and also suspended the registration of Greenpeace India under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA).

While it suspended the registration for a period of 180 days, it also accorded an opportunity to Greenpeace India to come before the government and show cause why its registration should not remain suspended.

Troubling brews in Indian tea:

The Home Ministry points to a report by Greenpeace India titled Trouble Brewing in Indian Tea. The dossier makes a note of this report, which was aimed at giving negative international publicity to Indian tea in the international market.

As per the Greenpeace report, Indian tea is being grown by using hazardous pesticides. It points out that all brands of Indian tea are grown by using hazardous pesticides. Indian tea has a major international market and the report of the Home Ministry suggests that the Greenpeace India report was aimed at undermining the value of Indian tea in the international market.

When Greenpeace India put out the tea report, it had quoted that it had the tea tested in some foreign labs. All these labs according to Greenpeace were abroad, but nowhere does it mention the names of these labs.

This is very questionable, says the Home Ministry report and is directly aimed at running a negative campaign internationally. There are also indications to suggest that there were some foreign activists who had come down to India to help Greenpeace India run the negative campaign.

Greenpeace India indulged in creating unionism:

The Home Ministry report notes that Greenpeace India had aimed at creating unions in various places were developmental works were being undertaken. Creating unions were aimed at staging people centric protests in various parts of the country only with an intention of blocking developmental works.

As a result of this action, Greenpeace India only ensured that locals were deprived of jobs. In addition to this, they also ensured that there was a lot of wastage of financial resources.

Further, the Home Ministry report also speaks about a conference in Istanbul held in 2012 in which Greenpeace India aligned with foreign NGOs. The main intention of this conference was to undermine coal developmental projects in India. The conference in Istanbul was titled Coal Strategy Conference.

Training in unionsim:

Greenpeace India also brought down several UK-based activists including its own activist, Benjamin David. These persons were brought down and told to address a gathering of people. The intention was to train persons on how to stage manage protests and how unionism would help further the cause of disrupting developmental activities.

It was found that in a few cases the NGO had booked rooms in India for these foreign activists. However, they would not book the room in the name of the visiting activist. It would be booked under the name of an Indian activist so that there is no trail leading up to the visitor.

It was found in one of the cases that Greenpeace India had booked two rooms for the same day in different places. However, the investigators managed to smell the rat out since the two rooms were booked in different places under the name of the same Indian activist.

OneIndia News